In my ongoing war against clutter, I recently saw this idea on pinterest and was excited to give it a try.

Recycling my old glass jars as touch-up paint containers. This is a good one for me, I have a lot of one gallon paint tins in my garage, most of them almost empty, and I don’t want to get rid of them in case I need to repaint a chip or scrape on one of my walls, door frames, or shelves.

These tins take up a lot of real estate and they get rusty and difficult to open after only a few years. By decanting the almost empties into a clean glass jam or olive jar, I’m not only saving a ton of shelf space, but it’s easy to see which color I’m looking for, I can give the jar a shake before I open it (if the paint has separated), and it’s much easier to open the jar and carry it to the spot that needs a touch up, do the job, and put it away again. Plus the jars look cute lined up on the shelf!

Don’t panic when you open one of your old paint tins and it looks completely ruined, It’s a good idea to shake every paint can for a minute or two before you open it anyway, but if it still looks nothing like the color it should be, use a wooden paint stirrer (or an old take-out chopstick) and stir it for another minute or so. More likely than not, it will turn back into the paint it once was unless it’s been sitting there for a few decades!

Carefully label each jar so you know what color it is, the paint brand and whether it is oil or acrylic, flat low sheen, semi gloss, or gloss. Add the name of the room the paint was used in as well.

This was a quick and easy job though I quickly ran out of jars, so I’ll need to wait a while until I can eat more jam, before I decant the rest of the paint left-overs! You will still need to dispose of the empty cans responsibly (call your local city’s refuse and recycling department for advice).